When you are old
There will be a house
On a hill
Where you will dwell,
All cosy and warm and wrapped in a blanket.
There you will dwell.

And the trees all around,
For miles around,
Will shelter you from the world,
As your hands get arthritic from their years of toil
And your fists refuse to open.

Only then will you hear my name,
Breathed softly on the evening wind,
And remember youthful times long past.

My lonely spirit will smile on you
And all your aging memories,
Vivid as the day they were wrought.
And though you can’t see me
I will gently brush the silver hair from your wrinkled brow
In the hope that for a moment
(I don’t want long, just a moment)
You’ll wish you hadn’t been so dismissive of my Echo of old.